Method and system for generating a bidirectional delta file

Abstract

The present invention relates to a system and method of generating an encoded bidirectional delta file to be used for reconstructing target and source files by decoding said bidirectional delta file, each of said target and source files comprising one or more substantially identical substrings, wherein each of said substrings is encoded within said bidirectional delta file by using a single pointer.

1 . A method of generating an encoded bidirectional delta file to be used for reconstructing target and source files by decoding said bidirectional delta file, each of said target and source files comprising one or more substantially identical substrings, where each of said substrings is encoded within said bidirectional delta file by using a single pointer, wherein the steps of encoding and decoding a bidirectional delta file are performed and implemented in any of
 a) computer hardware, and   b) computer software embodied in a physically-tangible, non-transitory, computer-readable medium.   
     
     
         2 . The method according to  1 , wherein the target file is reconstructed by using the source file and the bidirectional file. 
     
     
         3 . The method according to  1 , wherein the source file is reconstructed by using the target file and the bidirectional file. 
     
     
         4 . The method according to  1 , further comprising determining the substantially identical substring within each one of the target and source files by searching said target and source files. 
     
     
         5 . The method according to  4 , wherein the substantially identical substring is the substring having a predefined length, said substring determined when starting searching the target and source files from a corresponding location within said target and/or source files. 
     
     
         6 . The method according to  5 , further comprising continuously updating the corresponding location within the target and source files. 
     
     
         7 . The method according to  1 , further comprising adding at least one flag bit to each of the substantially identical substrings. 
     
     
         8 . The method according to  1 , wherein the substantially identical substring is an aligned substring. 
     
     
         9 . The method according to  1 , wherein the substantially identical substring is a non-aligned substring. 
     
     
         10 . The method according to  1 , wherein the substantially identical substring is a self-pointer. 
     
     
         11 . The method according to  1 , further comprising compressing the bidirectional delta file by using at least one compression method. 
     
     
         12 . A system configured to generate an encoded bidirectional delta file to be used for reconstructing target and source files by decoding said bidirectional delta file, each of said target and source files comprising one or more substantially identical substrings, where each of said substrings is encoded within said bidirectional delta file by using a single pointer, wherein the bidirectional delta encoder and the bidirectional delta decoder are implemented in any of
 a) computer hardware, and   b) computer software embodied in a physically-tangible, non-transitory, computer-readable medium.   
     
     
         13 . A program storage device readable by machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine to perform a method of generating an encoded bidirectional delta file to be used for reconstructing target and source files by decoding said bidirectional delta file, each of said target and source files comprising one or more substantially identical substrings, wherein each of said substrings is encoded within said bidirectional delta file by using a single pointer. 
     
     
         14 . The method according to  1 , substantially as described and illustrated. 
     
     
         15 . The system according to  claim 12 , substantially as described and illustrated. 
     
     
         16 . The program storage device according to  claim 13 , substantially as described and illustrated.